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PaperclipPerfector  27d ago (text post)   34837 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 3, 2025

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This is a good example of a bigger point, which is that "efficiency" isn't just referring to the direct costs of spending. When you get rid of the guy that's in charge of regulating showerhead flow, you don't just save the $100K per year on the useless regulator, you also save compliance costs for every company that makes showerheads and create additional consumer surplus for people that can get showerheads they actually like. To not put a thumb on the scale, it's worth mentioning that you also (putatively) increase costs for water and whatever environmental costs are associated with it. Each choice when it comes to getting rid of regulators has significant externality impacts, both positive and negative, that are part of the picture of "efficiency".

in charge of regulating showerhead flow

Every time I'm outside the US I remark at how awesome the showers are. Probably largely a function of the flow rate. I'm sympathetic to the idea that saving water is good, especially in Western states that are quite arid, but residential water use is pretty small compared to everything else anyway. IMO it'd be better if we let the flow restrictions be required only in California and Nevada.

residential water use is pretty small compared to everything else anyway

Yes. Single digit percent small. They crack down hard on people like me for no good reason. A trivial amount of water is saved.

I replaced my crappy low flow shower heads with big good ones. It is worth it.

Removing the flow restrictor from your shower is a simple job you can do in ten minutes off a YouTube video.

Yeah, it's why I use that example. Anyone that's experienced a decent shower hates these stupid trickle flow showerheads. I can barely think of a better example of what I mean when I say that we pay federal employees to make our lives slightly worse in pointless, annoying ways that no one would ever have considered a federal issue in the past.

They're also a fantastic example of how the rules are only for the hoi polloi. Anyone with resources is going to just get a rainfall shower or other high-end fixture, not buy a showerhead off Amazon and strip out the regulator.

Showers are annoying but what’s way worse is water saving dishwashers. They run for way longer, and do bad job cleaning.

What we need there is repeal of anti-backsliding legislation, or a Supreme Court ruling that anti-backsliding legislation violates the constitution.

Not sure that's how that works.

Many things are bottlenecked around getting the 'ok to proceed' from regulators.

If you cut half of them, you just doubled the backlog for the half still around, you haven't saved compliance costs then, you've made them worse.

Many (perhaps most) of these regulations don't exist by statute and could be unraveled quite easily. The problem was putting a bunch of people into makework jobs where they filed all of the appropriate paperwork in the rulemaking process that created a bunch of pointless rules for the industry to follow. Replacing the showerhead flow regulation enthusiasts with people that undo that swiftly would, of course, be fought by environmental groups during the rulesmaking process, but there are usually not statutory requirements that this sort of thing continues.

I would be interesting in a breakdown between what percentage of regulations are a situation where nothing happens prior to government approval, and where no new is good news from the government.

My dad is a nuclear engineer, I heard a ton of complaining about the NRC stood in the way of progress growing up. I wholeheartedly accept that story, that said, lawyers and financier aren't letting you proceed without government sign off.

My sense for it is that new drugs work the same way.

And on a smaller scale, getting the permits that you need to build any new building works the same way.

If you cut the people you need to give you the all-clear in half, you haven't improved the situation.

Showerhead flow is, unfortunately, statutory.

Well, shit.

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